


Quantum Suicide: A Love Story

by Tantastic



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Character Death, Death (Character) - Freeform, Emotional Baggage, Existential Angst, M/M, Masturbation, Mythology - Freeform, Personification of Death, Plot Related OOC, Rimming, Romance, Science, Suicide, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-30 06:51:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3927034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tantastic/pseuds/Tantastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Death loves Carlos. And Carlos wishes he could say the same thing about death, except, they've only just met and really, Carlos did not expect to meet death in quite this way." </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Death loves Carlos.

And Carlos wishes he could say the same thing about death, except, they've only just met and really, Carlos did not expect to meet death in quite this way.

Death would later tell him with a blissful sigh and a caress of his cheek that ‘this had to happen and it was always going to happen like this.’

Carlos first met death in a cold white room, with a metal chair digging into his back, while staring down the barrel of a gun. A .50 Desert Eagle to be precise. It was his choice. His research partners had offered their suggestions, the very research partners who now have their faces plastered to the window watching Carlos with equal amounts of sickening dread and existential delight, and of course the gun had to fit inside the rest of the machinery they had built for this experiment, but in the end Carlos picked the .50 Desert Eagle simply because he liked the name. It was a wonderful piece of subjectivity in a place where there was no room for it.

They had something to prove. Too many grants accepted, too many careers on the line, everyone holding their breath. They were quantum physicists with a hypothesis, a deadly design, and what would be an unfathomable conclusion. 

But for Carlos, brave or perhaps cowardly Carlos, a swan song was playing. Adrenaline commanding the roar of blood in his ears, his breathing loud and labored, the accompanying hum of the florescent lights above, and the whirl of the quantum particle rotator rigged up to the pistol in front of him.

HHMMmm....HHMMmm....HHMMmm....click

Carlos flinches. 

He flinches every time. 

So too do the on lookers. The machine starts up again, detecting quantum particles, found, which way they spin, clockwise, not counter-clockwise thank god not counter-clockwise, the gun does not fire. A light clicks on to indicate the machines somewhat, statistically speaking, impossible findings. His life is spared once again. Repeat.

HHMMmm....HHMMmm....HHMMmm...click

There is something to be said for having your life literally in the hands of the universe. Every moment his life is spared is accompanied by a high that Carlos is, at this point delirious with. 

His mind is a rush of implications. For if every chance the gun might fire, two identical universes must be made. Identical except for the fact that in one Carlos dies and in the other, he lives. And for all the universes in which he has died, on the first try, the third, twentieth, there must be a universe in which he does not, has not, will not die. The one and only universe in which he will live to see the results of what would have been his last experiment. That is at least, the hypothesis of he and his colleagues.

At every point at which the gun does not fire, the likelihood that Carlos, this very brave or very cowardly Carlos, is in fact a THE Carlos of immortality increases.

He looks at his coworkers for the first time since this experiment began, their expressions reflecting his own thoughts. This is it, somehow, miraculously, this is it! 

Carlos feels godlike as his focus returns to the barrel of the gun and into the face of a person who was not sitting there a second ago.

A noise accompanies the man in the dark cloak’s sudden appearance, like static, harmoniously synching to the fading sounds of Carlos’ last moments.

HHMMmm....HHMMmm....HHMMmm...click

Carlos doesn't flinch this time. 

"You must be Carlos!" The man says as he lifts his hood. A face is revealed to Carlos that seems perfectly ordinary and imperfectly extraordinary at the same time. The man’s eager eyes roam over Carlos as he chokes on his own adrenaline and shock.

As if irked by his own outburst, the man closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and extends his hand in a sturdier business like way. "Hello, I’m called death,” he says and like a child with no self restraint he leans forward, a great grin stretches his lips, “and it’s so neat to finally meet you!"

Carlos blinks numbly and accepts Death's warm hand into his own trembling frigid one. Death stares at their joined hands and a smile blossoms on his face before he hides it, biting his bottom lip.

Death gazes into Carlos’ eyes, brings his other hand up to cover their joined hands, and reverently whispers “Goodnight, Carlos.”

Carlos does not hear the gun fire over the sound of blood and static rushing in his ears.

“Goodnight.”

_He feels the world tilt._

_He sees no more._

_And…_

_And…_

_And…_

 

…And he’s going to be late. 

It’s 7:30pm and he’s going to be late to his own town meeting. He glances at his watch again. And then again quickly, confused. At least he thought he was going to be late. He taps his watch a bit, very scientifically of course, before walking briskly out of his bedroom. Wallet in one lab coat pocket, phone in the other. He navigates around moving boxes and locks the door to his apartment. In his car, he takes a minute to hold his wrist against his ear and focus on the slow ticking of his watch.

* * *

 

When Carlos says that “Night Vale is the most scientifically interesting community in the US,” it is with the sudden realization that he doesn't quite remember what “scientifically” actually means. 

The word is different somehow, in someway. And it pulls a nagging sensation from the base of his neck. Where there was once certainty, now ambiguity. He wonders briefly if this is what it feels like to have a stroke. As his apartment door closes, Carlos leans heavily against it. He wiggles his fingers and toes checking for numbness, thankful that at least his basic medical knowledge is still intact. No, not a stroke then. The relief is powerful and sends him sprawling out on the couch with a sigh. 

But he’s not the medical kind of scientist, no he isn't _that_ , he is a _different_ kind of scientist and that is important somehow. He fidgets on the couch. It’s stiff and uncomfortable like all pre-furnished apartment furniture. His fidgeting has left him staring at a wall of boxes, specifically the bubbly handwriting scrawled across them that is not his own.

He sits up slowly, a frown pulling at his brow. He takes off his glasses and rubs at his face. He stares blankly at the barren walls of his living room as if they had something to say on the matter. Another sigh escapes him. But this one sounds more like defeat then relief. He takes a peak at the boxes around him. Deliberating.

Half an hour later finds him sitting on his living room floor surrounded by half emptied boxes and stuff. Lots of stuff. His stuff? He can’t say for sure.

There is panic filling his lungs and creeping up his throat as he moves through the rooms tearing through boxes, half mad. Toiletries, kitchenware, clothing, but nothing personal, no identification, nothing to mark his place here in the present besides for Carlos himself and even that is in question at this point.

He bolts out of the building. Apartment unlocked and Carlos uncaring, he heads to his lab. It is empty of his coworkers. 

Everything is golden. The dying sunlight is streaming headily into the empty lab, illuminating ascending dust motes swirling through the stagnant space. It's familiar, this little golden oasis, in a way that nothing else here is and every breath he takes gets a little bit easier.

He drags his heavy feet through the lab. The instruments are familiar in shape and form but anything beyond that is…gone. Like a language learned long ago that has rusted from disuse, the words are both familiar and alien at once. And here, the numbers on the side of the beakers, arbitrary for he doesn't know what unit of measurement they represent. He swallows back that persistent panic and places the glass back on the counter. 

He decides to spend his night on the smelly but much more comfortable sofa in the lab break room, his head propped up by his balled up lab coat, feeling jagged and lonely for the first time since he can remember _which isn't very far back_ he thinks and his suddenly overwhelmed heart sends a jitter of despair and terror through his body. His face contorts against his will and he clamps his hands over his eyes, trying to hold everything back, taking deep gasping breaths, and he tries to focus on anything, anything but crying.

There’s an old radio with a bent antenna, playing on top of the microwave. He found it in the storage closet, abandoned long ago, rusted knobs only turning enough for two radio stations, a talk show or some kind of emergency broadcast test. It wasn't a hard choice.

He focuses there and he just listens. He listens to a mans voice speaking of the atrocities of this city, atrocities that Carlos feels reflect the chaos in his mind. And the townspeople… the people just, _go with it_. And from the sound of it, they've been _just going with it_ for a very long time. 

It's comforting in way. Like, everything's going to be OK. And perhaps, Carlos thinks, he should just go with it too. Maybe things will work themselves out. Patience, that’s what he needs, patience. 

He peers at his watch. And then over at the clock on the wall, not believing that only two minutes have passed since he left the town meeting, rummaged through his entire apartment and lab, and had an emotional breakdown on the couch.

“Ok, that is seriously NOT okay!” He yells at it.

He springs the clock open and glares angrily inside when he realizes he doesn't even remember how a clock works. _He’s a scientist damn it and he’s going to figure out some science!_ He grabs some kind of machinery he hopes will measure _SOMETHING SCIENTIFIC DAMN IT_ and stomps out the door.

* * *

Carlos has thrown himself into the pursuit of science. Hectic months spin around him in a blur. With a town that needs saving every week, he simply doesn’t have time to think about his personal problems.

Like the reflections.

Mirrors, like time Carlos has found, don't work the same way in Night Vale. When he looks into one he doesn’t see a lone image reflected back at him, he sees multiple. 

He remembers a time when he was a young physicists in the making, _(physicists! That’s right he is a physicist)_ he would set up two mirrors facing each other and he would try to count how many of his reflections he could see. He only ever got up to 50, sometimes 60 with a few adjustments. 

Night Vale mirrors contains hundreds and hundreds of reflections without needing a second mirror at all. More astonishingly, the reflections are different. Individual. None of them are Carlos… except that they somehow are. All 1000 of them. Sometimes he has skin the color of dark oak, sometimes it’s more of a sickly lavender, sometimes his hair is thick with waves of elegant gray, sometimes it’s long and tied, and one time it even electric blue.. 

He asked his fellow scientists about this but none of them reported the same phenomenon and extensive testing on all mirrors in the vicinity remained inconclusive. Setting two Night Vale mirrors to face one another also… that was also… please don’t…

He covers them now.

Recently, it is one of the local radio hosts that has caught his attention. 

Not because his fellow scientists tease him about how the man apparently gushes about Carlos on the air. Not because they subtly, not-so-subtly try and get them to meet up:

“Scientist Mandy, what an interesting and dangerous discovery, we should let the community know!” 

“Why Scientist Billy, that’s an excellent idea. I know just the man for the job.” 

And this is how Carlos finds himself around said radio host. They’ve never spoken. Carlos leaves that up to his coworkers out of spite. 

No, he is interested in the radio host for a different reason entirely. If Carlos had to describe the appearance of the radio host, he wouldn’t be able to. 

Cecil Palmer flickers. He _hums_.

His form, though seemingly very physical, shifts in a very non-physical way. Like flipping through a book so fast you can't distinguish any words except for the fact that they are there. Cecil’s form flips rapidly between slightly varying ones. Carlos only catches glimpses of these different Cecil's, sometimes with green hair, caramel skin, and facial tattoos, sometimes the Cecil is white with glasses and blonde hair swept back. 

But his eyes…there is something haunting about them and Carlos to this day has yet to raise his gaze higher than the man’s sometimes prominent sometimes not, cheekbones.

One afternoon finds Carlos’ mind as barren and seemingly unoccupied as his apartment. He folds his laundry mechanically, enjoying this rare moment of mental peace. Thankful though he is, the bright slivers of memories that are periodically revealed to him through whatever blind holds them makes him less and less certain of who he is by the day and more and more certain that he is not this Carlos. A Carlos, certainly. But not the _right_ Carlos. Not for this place.

As he places some newly cleaned towels in the bathroom, he notices the sheet he uses to cover the mirror there has shifted and as he reaches to adjust it, his thoughts turn to a certain radio host. The parallels between him and the reflections in Carlos’ mirror are too great. 

He wonders if the man's forms are a mirage or some sort of glamor. Does he rapidly blink out of existence to reappear with a new visage, and if so how can he interact with anything on this plane of existence? Perhaps, Carlos thinks, that solving these questions will give him some direction for solving his own identity crisis.

Headstrong and with little planning as always seems to be the case these days, Carlos grabs a small machine from his lab and walks into the radio station. When questioned by the office intern, Carlos just makes some vague gestures and murmurs something about “testing for materials” and he applauds himself for how convincing he seems to be with so little effort when the nice girl jumps up and excitedly ushers him in to a nearby meeting room.

There’s something deeply deeply _wrong_ with the room and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. _It’s the table, it’s definitely the table. And the chairs. They’re just… too big really, and how did they even get them passed the door frame, I mean, seriously, how did they get in here?_ Carlos desperately focuses on this train of thought because there are other things about the room that he is NOT NOT NOT noticing…

The walls are too white.

The room is too cold.

The chair digs into his back.

And he hears a faint humming noise.

…HHMMmm..click

He flinches and wildly looks up to see a light, switching from “on air” red to and “off air” green. 

His heart is racing, sweat beads at his forehead despite the chill of the room, and he clutches the machine for dear life as his muscles seize up and his mind goes disturbingly quiet and there's a horrible memory sitting on the tip of his mind, just out of reach. Carlos braces himself for this unknown terrible thing when someone walks into the room and the moment flees as suddenly as it had struck him.

The man, the radio host, gives an odd little smile, flickering all the while and sits somewhat close to Carlos. 

They sit for a few minutes in silence as Carlos catches his breath, embarrassed. The radio host just stares, all of the flickering 1,000 radio hosts just starring, eyebrows drawn up and bottom lip between his teeth while Carlos tries to gather himself. The man starts up, loudly and suddenly, startling Carlos, “Hi! We haven’t officially met yet, I’m Cecil Palmer! And you’re Carlos! Oh uh, I don’t mean to be rude but it’s rare that we have a local celebrity in the studio! Soooooooo..... how may I service you-TO YOU! HOW-….how may I help you?” He clears his throat, a furious blush on his cheeks. His nervousness now present in that odd little smile.

Carlos can't help the unexpected tilt of his own lips. The man’s stumbling demeanor so juxtapose to what Carlos had experienced not a minute earlier, he can’t help the flattered airy laugh that bursts from him. 

Commencing with Plan A, Carlos boldly reaches across the the space between them and grabs Cecil’s hand in a firm hand shake. “It’s nice to meet you too, Mr. Palmer.” 

Cecil’s hand is slender, slack with his surprise, and even what a more left brained man might call, artistic. And definitely physical. Their hands solidly connect without interruption even as Cecil’s skin changes from a pale mint to a salmon pink and then back to caramel in the span of a second. Carlos continues his analysis, oblivious to the fact that Cecil seems to have stopped breathing. 

“Ohhhh, just Cecil is fine. I’m…just Cecil.” Cecil says breathlessly.

“And I’m a scientist, not a celebrity.” He replies with a grin.

He meant it as a joke, but then Carlos remembers who exactly it is he’s talking to, that it is this man’s fault he is treated like a celebrity, it is this very man that has an obsessive crush and professed his undying love for Carlos to the entire town and how, HOW could Carlos have forgotten THAT! Oh this just got terribly awkward. His grin falters.

He looks down at their hands where Cecil has still not let go. Carlos clears his throat and Cecil shrinks away like he was burnt. Carlos wants to leave but he needs to finish his experiment. He looks down and flips on the machine, tapping his finger against it impatiently as he waits for it to warm up.

“Oh I don’t know about that,” Cecil continues, “It’s just… so great to have you in Night Vale and we’re all so glad you’re here. I think we could really benefit from having a real scientist around. What is it your working on if you don’t mind me asking, I'm very into science.” 

_I’m sure you are._

“My team and I have a lot of things going on right now. I’m...um testing for materials, but Billy and Mandy have detected some astounding catastrophic earthquakes that no one seems to feel. They were taking measurements over by that little row of houses towards Radon Canyon.”

“Oh yes, that's Desert Bluffs for you.”

Carlos hums in reply, adjusting the machine that has only now turned on.

“You know,” Cecil continues, a sly drawl to his voice, “I may not be an official Night Vale Certified Tour Guide but I do know a lot about our humble little... _scientifically interesting community_. I could show you around the town sometime, for- for science of course…and we could get some coffee…it’s just that there’s this great place over by…” 

But Carlos is too busy frowning at the machine’s results to hear his clumsy flirting.

“...I mean as a scientist you might find it interesting- by the way where did you get your shirt? It just fits you soooo well, if you don’t mind me saying…”

Ok yeah, straight to Plan B it is. He turns back around, forcefully looking Cecil in the eyes, “Actually, what I really came here for was...”

He trails off, caught in a moment of déjà vu.

Looking into Cecil’s eyes is like confronting fate. It’s like standing on a cliff looking at the rocks so far below, like being in a submarine and watching a crack snake across the glass windows.

It’s like staring down the barrel of a gun.

In a room, 

where the walls are too white, 

the room is too cold,

the chair digs into his back,

and he hears a faint humming noise.

…HHMMmm… HHMMmm…

And those eyes.

Dread is creeping up Carlos’ spine, it reaches its hand around his throat and chokes him.

…HHMMmm… Click

The machine from the lab clicks and it sounds like the firing of a gun.

Carlos is out of the building, down the street, to his lab, running like death is chasing him and with a sickening churn of his stomach he realizes it is. Or rather, _he_ is.

Death is here in Night Vale masquerading as a somewhat-human being, declaring his love for Carlos on public radio. And Carlos is running into a lab that is blissfully empty of people and their questions but also empty of anything that might save his sanity.

_This is not his life._

His life was left behind in an quantum physics lab 40 miles west of Chicago. 

He falls to his knees by the eye wash station, gripping the edge of the tub. A horribly undignified keening escaping his clenched teeth as he faces his own mortality,thinking all the while that Hell is nothing like he thought it would be.

He hangs on to the tub as tremors shake his body and tears stream from his face. It’s a long while until his sobs have subsided, his stomach muscles sore, his eyes sting, and he is finally emotionally numb. And his brain, his for the first time horribly scientific brain, starts the questions when all he wants is to hide from them.

He died. He is dead. Yet some part of his consciousness must still live on. But how?

Life after death. 

He was never religious enough to consider the concept. But here he is. Here it is. In some twisted shape or form. 

_And what an unorganized after life it is Carlos can’t help but think if all of the newly deceased are simply thrown into it without preamble, gates, or service desks._ He just woke up in a space that was seemingly carved out for him, like a living grave, and what a thought that is.

Perhaps though, he is still not a religious man. Perhaps this existence is the side effect of messing with quantum mechanics. Perhaps even, his experiment worked. Perhaps. Even. He left his universe behind for a new one in place of the Carlos that was supposed to be here instead.

There is only one person who would know.

And now an extremely brave or cowardly Carlos finds himself humorlessly faced with a common concern of the world he left behind:

_How do you confront Death?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scientific disclaimer: Quantum suicide is only a thought experiment, not a real one. More than that, it's a theory that _disproves_ (arguably) the possibility of the multi-verse. I liked the idea and decided to take some creative liberties with it, I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not trying to promote suicide or anything, that's obvious right? I hope that's obvious.
> 
> Grammar disclaimer: This fic was written on a phone. Yes, it was as aggravating as you can imagine. I’ve tried to proof read all awkward autocorrects out of it but there might be more hiding. Sorry ‘bout that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Way longer chapter this time. And for next time: porn! And the time after that: more porn! And tears, porn and tears.

Death is in love with Carlos.

A fact that grates on Carlos nerves while he is trying to painfully pry answers from the man. _Man?_

“Are you even human?” He asks bitterly into the Moonlight All-Night Diner’s equally bitter and just as burnt coffee.

Cecil sits across the small checkered booth, turned away from Carlos and slumped into himself as he mindlessly rotates his coffee mug in between long restless fingers. There's a strange look on his face. A collision of eagerness and trepidation that twists his features in a way that would be comical if Cecil was anyone besides who he is, _what_ he is.

He speaks finally. Softly. Hesitantly. Voice brought up from some vast and far off depths, “Oh I'm as human as anyone here can claim to be…” he trails off and turns from the window. “I have to say Carlos, when you asked me out for coffee I wasn’t really- I have to admit you’ve caught me a little off guard.”

“Don’t talk to me about being caught off guard,” Carlos’ retort whips from his lips with a sting much worse than he meant. This entire conversation is more painful than he meant, but Carlos is only human, or as much as he can claim to be he thinks with a scowl. Cecil grimaces and makes a placating gesture as Carlos continues. “You brought me to this town with no explanation! No memories, no idea of who I was, really was, or _why_ I was here.”

“Carlos! Carlos please don’t be angry! It was for the best. I had thought- considering the sort of life you had just been through- I thought you would like a new one! A second chance at life where you wouldn’t feel compelled to volunteer for suicidal experiments-“ 

“I did not volunteer!” Carlos is yelling now. He’s owed that much at least. “You think I was suicidal? I did what I had to for science! For the betterment of humanity and the advancement of the human race! Not because I was _depressed_!” 

“Well one of you was!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

Cecil takes a deep breath and retreats back into the folds of the booth cushion, rubbing his thumb against the edge of his mug and staring down at his lap. The break in argument allows Carlos a small piece of silence; a small piece of great silence accounting for much more than the two of them. He discretely glances over his shoulder at the diner’s other patrons now staring at them with annoyed frowns or unkind smiles. He brings a hand to his forehead trying to rub the embarrassment and frustration from it as he re-evaluates their chosen battleground.

“Look Carlos, I… may not have used the best judgment in regards to your…situation. I have obviously caused you some undue distress. I can see that now, and I am deeply sorry.” Cecil says, his temporary bangs falling into his face as he bows over the table.

Carlos’ head feels heavy suddenly, with the weight of Cecil’s sincerity. He brings the hand rubbing at his brow to support his chin, his fingers still massaging his temple. His eyes drift shut with the release of tension the small motion creates. But through lashes and fingers, he sees Cecil move. Reaching. Those long fingers so close to brushing against Carlos’ still aching head. But he stops before the contact is made and he draws back suddenly, as if hoping Carlos had not seen. He did. He wish he hadn’t. This would be so much easier if he hadn’t. He wishes Cecil was not such an easy person to forgive.

“It’s alright,” Carlos says at length and with a humorless chuckle, “I mean… There's nothing _right_ about this but, I guess, it’s not so bad being here. In Night Vale. It’s much better now that I have my memories back at least. Thanks for that by the way. I thought they were gone for good.” He mumbles the last part into his hand and rubs at the inside of his wrist. Cecil beams at him like they didn't just have a shouting match in the middle of a diner. 

He remembers for just a moment that electric touch from two hours ago. The memories twittering through his neurons from the careful brush of Cecil’s fingertip against the inside of his wrist. Memories rushing back to affirm what he already knew and solder the pieces he couldn’t quite get together. 

“After all” Carlos says loudly clapping his hands together and trying to seem less affected than he feels, “Night Vale really is a _scientifically interesting community_.” He shares a smile and raised eyebrow with Cecil. “I can do some _real_ experiments now. What I'm most eager to research is the trees.”

“The trees.” 

“The trees,” Carlos nods patiently.

“Specifically, the trees in the Whispering Forest next to Science Monitoring Station. Have you ever been in that forest? It’s silent. Utterly silent. It's very silent for a _Whispering_ Forest anyway. Birds do not sing. There are no birds to sing. Mammals do not cry. There are no mammals to cry. Leaves do not crunch and twigs do not snap. The forest is bare of underbrush and canopy. I could walk perfectly between the trees never needing to watch my step. I could look up between the branches and see the moon, beautiful and looming and much, much, closer than it has any right to be. And standing there, gazing at the moon, I could not find my voice; the forest had swallowed it too.

“The forest was silent, until I was silent and only then did I understand. Something did call out in that moonlight. Lots of somethings. They were calling to the moon, beckoning her closer. I could not hear, but I could _feel_. And I realized it was the trees. They were not whispering but there was some form of rudimentary communication. Or. No. It was…spiritual in a way. It was this organic ebb and flow so much like whale song….Perhaps their communication might register on sonar. I don’t know. I need more data.”

When he finally stops talking enough to breathe he notices a dreamy look on Cecil’s face and can’t help smiling in return.

“Well I would hardly want to get in between a man and his trees but perhaps, if you’re in need of some assistance, I would always be ready and willing to lend a hand or more if need be.” 

Carlos can feel a touch of heat on his cheeks and is mortified. He is way to old too be blushing at ill attempted innuendos and certainly not ones spewing from the lips of a man who goes by the name of Death. 

Thankfully Cecil saves him from responding, “As long as I’m not on duty of course. I do have a great responsibility to the community and station management can be…well…” he finishes with a nervous laugh and a strange gesture with his hands.

Carlos hums and frowns in thought. “What is it you do exactly, Cecil?”

Cecil leans back elegantly against the booth, confidence apparent in the tip of his head and the sly smile on his face. All traces of his previous nervousness have vanished. “Why Carlos, I'm a radio broadcaster,” he says with a flourish of pride.

“No, the other thing.” 

Cecil says nothing as he takes a long sip of his surely cold by now coffee, apparently willing to completely ignore the question. Carlos presses on, “What do you do when you’re…when you’re not Cecil.” 

“I'm always Cecil.” 

“I mean, when you’re not Cecil Palmer the radio host. When you’re Cecil…the…the um…Grim Reaper? I don't know!” 

Cecil looks scandalized.

“I am not a Grim Reaper!” 

Carlos laughs, smiling thoughtfully, “Well what are you called then? I think I used to know your other names. My grandmother would call you _La Muerte_.” 

“Ah, I’ve always liked that one. Though I am decidedly less feminine than your grandmother might have liked. I prefer _Mateguas._ ”

Carlos frowns at the unfamiliar word.

When Cecil next speaks it is with a rumbling archaic timber that stirs Carlos vertebrae by vertebrae. “I am a chauffeur of the conscious. Call it souls, spirits, or life energy. I simply transport awareness from one place to another to maintain a universal equilibrium. I am the catalyst. I transform, I transition. Though I can't take all the credit, I do work very hard. And I am _very_ good at my job.”

Carlos shivers and inhales a shaky breath looking down at his watch; away from those fathomless eyes. “So I really am dead?”

“Yes. Well…normally yes. But in your case no, not exactly...I mean you are, sometimes you are. There are the “you”s who are. But, not all of them, so I guess you could say-“ 

Cecil’s fluttering fades into the background chatter and all Carlos can hear is the loud ticking of his wristwatch in the little diner and the echoes of an experiment conducted deep under a lab 40 miles west of Chicago. He gathers the evidence, swallows hard. One last moment of hesitance before his conclusion is set free upon the world so that Carlos might experience its consequences. He feels the air leave the room. It retreats and accumulates just beyond reach, waiting to crash like a tsunami. 

“It worked,” he can barely get the words passed his trembling lips. “The experiment worked. Didn’t it? That’s why I feel so out of place here; because I’m not from here. This is a different universe, a different reality, a different world, a different Carlos. This isn’t just the afterlife, this an _alternate_ life. An alternate me. And all the Carloses in my mirrors, they’re all alternate me's too. All of them. Some alive. Some dead. Forever...”

What he gets in response is a hesitantly whispered and horrifyingly simple, “Yes.”

Carlos looks down at his hands and around the diner, expecting this information to manifest into something corporeal and significant and he is disappointed to find that it has not. He is just a guy sitting in a crowded diner with a strange and eccentric man, who happens to flicker. He looks over to Cecil’s rapidly alternating appearance. 

“How do you see me?”

Cecil blushes. “Oh! Um ok well, you’re very handsome, and your hair is just fantastic!” At Carlos’ frown Cecil is quick to change his tune, “You mean how do I see you as… **ahem** right. Well. To me you are multitudinal. You are far reaching and shifting and superfluous. You are like…oh how do I explain? If the Multiverse was the night then life would be the tiny lights in this one vast sky. Twinkling. Some fade and others burst forth illuminating those around them. But Carlos you are not a light, you are an aurora!”

Carlos’ eyes widen at the metaphor and as he looks at Cecil’s form and its shifting hues he finds that he understands the sentiment all too well.

“But not just any aurora,” Cecil continues, “You are The Aurora. The one. The only. You are full of every color known to this universe and not yet known. And you stretch so far from the beginning of the night to the very end and no matter where I am, there you are. It's what I love most about you…Ah! I mean- I mean-“ Cecil is bright red, eyes wide before he wrenches them shut and hides his face with his hands. Carlos catches a quiet “I can't believe I just said that!” 

Love. The apex of human feeling, the penultimate of selflessness, and a gift yearned for by all. The word is tossed so casually into conversation now and unforgivingly over the radio for all to hear. Some might think it’s romantic, but experience and logic have had their way with Carlos for far too long for such declaration to do anything but stir caution and suspicion in his heart. This thing, whatever it is, is starting to turn his stomach.

“Stop that. Look, it's not exactly news is it? My scientists tell me how you talk about me on air, how you told the whole town you were in love with me. What is that really about, Cecil?”

Cecil stops his mumbling and hunches impossibly smaller, sinking further into the booth hoping it will swallow him up. 

“Is it some weird Night Vale custom? A game? A bet? Is it a joke?”

He suddenly finds himself nose to nose with Cecil, the man practically leaning on the table. “Absolutely not!” the man bellows, “I admit it was not the best place to confess my feelings to you but they are in fact genuine and absolutely should be taken seriously! I’m not this abominable creature that has never known love. I know what love is and this is that! This is so that! I-I want that. This.” he says in one breath punctuating his words by pressing his finger to the table between them. Carlos is flustered to say the least. He’s never encountered someone who wears their heart on their sleeve like Cecil and he doesn’t quite know how to handle it.

“Ok, ok,” he says lightly pushing Cecil back into his seat, “It’s just, how can you… it was the first time we had even seen each other and it was only for a few seconds. You didn't and still don’t even know me. How can you…”

With a bite of his lip, Cecil says “Well actually, it wasn’t the first time we met. Actually... we met once before.”

“I would have remembered meeting someone like _you_.”

Cecil clears his throat, puffs out his chest, and slips into his broadcaster persona, “It was May. A blistering and abnormally humid May. That arid gust warmed my back as I made my way into the glass building. I was there to meet an old man. I rarely do, meet the passengers. But it was time, and he was ready. Few ever are. I met him in a dusty office, more akin to a closet with a high ceiling packed with shelves upon shelves of musty books and fossils from times long passed. He was there, sitting at his cluttered desk, working still to the very last minute, stroking his long black beard. He greeted me warmly and asked that I have a seat.”

“Yes…” Carlos says, voice quiet as to not disturb a skittish memory, “Dr. Komaji... He was the lead researcher for the Quantum Suicide Theory. But he passed a month before we started testing… So I took over.”

“Yes, that was his name. I sat with him and we had a lovely conversation about his brightest of students. A young man full of ambition and a youthful passion for discovery. They had worked long hours together he said, developing their proposal, perfecting their design. They had sat together in agonized anticipation, awaiting the panel’s decision, hoping to receive the universities approval and funding. The old man had a sickness of the heart. He had grown weary of the world and its disappointments, disheartened by too many rejections, so much so that the news of their approval and the pure joy on his student’s face was too much to bear. His only regret was that his old heart did not have enough strength to carry him to the auditorium, where his brightest of students was giving a presentation of their proposal to the curious minds of the university.

“And then the old man was gone. In his absence he left the room quiet and lonely. But for a moment I heard a voice from far way. It echoed around the office, through the hall, down a flight of stairs, and burst forth from the open auditorium doors. The old man's words were heavy in my heart and I found myself moved. As I made my way through the building I listened as the voice spoke so sweetly about the Multiverse and alternate selves and so many other things. Some I did not understand. Others I understood too well. When finally I found myself at the auditorium door, I stood mesmerized by the man on stage. That was the first time I saw you Carlos. I saw every incarnation of you, bursting across my night like an Aurora that was hidden by clouds until that very moment. I saw everything you were, had been, and would be. I saw everything _we_ might be, together. And so, so quickly I…” his voice catches there on a word he is now frightened to use around the one who perhaps needs to hear it the most, “…I could not help how I felt about you.”

They both look down into their empty mugs as the silence engulfs them. One is surprised. The other is resigned. Both dwell on the humanity of Death.

Quietly, Cecil says, “We should probably leave too, before we get dragged out. They’ve been waiting.” 

“What?”

Cecil nods meaningful and Carlos looks around the empty diner, then outside. The people from the diner have lined up, balancing on the curb and facing the road. All holding hands as they stare up into a sky as black as the asphalt below their feet. The road is littered with conch shells, spindly and iridescent, and once outside Carlos swears he hears a faint bird song from them. 

Ozone pricks at his skin as he joins the people on the curb and he stares in abject horror at the funnel cloud appearing overhead. As winds rush around them he barely feels anything besides Cecil's hand in his own and he’s not sure who grabbed whose hand first.

When they regain their footing and Carlos can finally see again, the clouds are gone though the now silent seashells remain. Everything seems fine and no one comments on the fact that the sun is setting in the wrong direction.

Later on the radio, Cecil describes it as an excellent first date and Carlos can't find the words to correct him.

* * *

On a blinding Sunday afternoon, Carlos is giving half a thought to putting away his groceries when he sees an _Ojo de Dios_ at the bottom of his grocery bag. He was about to buy one from the little girl at the market, but she got offended and told him in no uncertain words that she was, “Gonna take her _yarn kites_ some other place if he was gonna be rude!” and stormed off. How this one got into his bag he has no clue. He watches it for a bit, expecting it to sprout legs and walk, burst into a cloud of noxious gas, or start reciting Shakespeare as many things in Night Vale are want to do.

It doesn't budge, puff, or otherwise make a sound and carefully after a gentle nudge, he picks it up. It's beautifully made with bright silky yarn and a lovely pattern. He decides he likes it very much and hangs it in the window.

As he turns away, a glint catches his eye. There is light coming through the center of the _Ojo de Dios_ where there should be nothing but wood. He touches the outside of the wooden frame, it's solid and most certainly there. He follows the yarn covered sticks down towards the center where they should connect but suddenly and unfathomable don't. He bends the sticks, the yarn pulls, the hole in the center morphs but remains completely transparent.

Tentatively, he sticks his finger through the opening and to his astonishment; the tip of his finger vanishes. He pulls back in surprise and tries again. He holds the _Ojo de Dios_ in the palm of his other hand and puts his finger through the center again, he grins when his finger and palm do not connect and he pushes in further until his second knuckle has vanished as well. 

He wiggles his finger, feeling a peculiar wetness and then a piercing bite. He yells, startled, withdrawing his finger and dropping the _Ojo de Dios_ to the floor. There’s a small bite mark marring his skin and he tends to the small beads of blood that well up.

When he returns for the _Ojo de Dios_ it's nowhere to be found. With as frown he marks the strange encounter in his journal and turns back to his groceries.

* * *

While Carlos has settled more but mostly less into this strange new life in Night Vale, driven not by vanity but by restlessness, he would from time to time, take the sheet off of the bathroom mirror and gaze into it. He is certain there is something _missing._

He finally stops by the radio station one day to ask Cecil about it. It had been a couple of weeks since their “date” and Cecil was starting to sound mopey on the radio according to Carlos’ coworkers. It hadn’t been like he was avoiding the man, well, no that’s exactly what he had been doing. It’s just, he doesn’t really know how to handle Cecil’s feelings. He’s flattered of course. But how do you respond to something like that, to someone who knows everything about you that you don’t yet know. It's like when there’s a room full of people talking about you and when you walk in they all go quiet. He would rather turn around and just walk out the door.

He hears Cecil's impassioned voice over the loudspeaker in the station lobby, choosing to wait there instead of the offered meeting room. 

He listens to what new thing is plaguing the town. Apparently it’s a man named Steve Carlsberg that has Cecil riled up. 

He peeks his head into the control room where an intern is leaning back in her chair and playing a game on her flip phone, unconcerned with Carlos’ intrusion and Cecil’s ranting in the room on the other side of the window. Cecil is wearing an impressive frown and his cheeks are red with outrage as he gesticulates to his invisible audience.

With dawning trepidation, Carlos wonders what kind of man or beast could make Death so angry. He must remember to stay away from whoever it is. His attention is drawn back as Cecil's voice morphs into that ancient and eldritch tone, the one you might expect a being such as Death to have in the first place. That voice does something to him. It's like being pulled by the force of gravity. It terrifies him, this inescapable collision, but the force is demanding, and he follows unquestioningly.

He walks straight into the studio.

“And THAT is just-“ Cecil’s bellowing stops suddenly and in a tightly pleased voice he says, “And now for the weather.”

He swivels his chair in Carlos’ direction with unholstered excitement, “Carlos! I- Hello! Welcome to my recording studio!” He says quickly, adjusting his tie and smoothing out his hair, the earlier rage in his cheeks dying down to an embarrassed blush.

It’s charming, his preening, but Carlos has other horrors on his mind and he can't hide the fear from his voice when he asks, “Should I be afraid of this Steve Carlsberg?”

“Yes! You should be! Fear his horrendous manners and too salty scones, his conspiracy theories and his poorly maintained Toyota Corolla. And don’t even get me started on his offensively bad hand-eye coordination. Never for any reason let him into your bowling team. He is a fearsome person indeed.” 

“Right. Ok. But he is a person?”

“He’s an abomination,” Cecil growls in that dark voice of his and Carlos can never ever tell him how that voice pulls his spine straight and turns his knees to jelly. Changing the subject quickly Carlos clears his throat, “I had some questions for you actually, if you have a minute.”

“Oh Carlos, I would give you so much more than a minute,” the currently blonde man says with a grin, “Ask away!”

Carlos laughs; he could write a book’s worth of the man's cringe inducing innuendos by now really. “I’ll keep that in mind, but Cecil, I wanted to talk to you about the mirrors.”

Cecil goes strangely quiet.

“It’s just that, I keep looking in the mirrors, at my reflections, but I can’t seem to find the right one. I can’t find me.”

“Oh that. Yes, well as you know Carlos, those are your parallel selves, the other Carloses from other worlds.” 

“Yes but, I'm not this Carlos. Me, the original Carlos, I'm not this short, my voice is not this high. It’s like I'm inhabiting a different Carlos.”

“…yes?”

Carlos purses his lips, “Really? Yes?”

Cecil starts fluttering about, frantic to avoid another argument, “I mean you will always be Carlos no matter where you are. You will always have to be the Carlos that world needs. Say you were to visit another world, then you will appear as the Carlos of that world.”

“I would be different?”

“Yes. And the same. You are all Carlos after all.”

“So it's kind of a catch-22 isn’t it?” 

“Please tell me that’s not your bowling average.” Cecil jokes weakly. Carlos strains to smile. 

They're quiet for a moment. Before the intern knocks on the window, “30 seconds Cecil!”

Turning back to his desk to ready the next segment, Cecil says, ”I’ve found that newspaper works best for covering mirrors, we have some old issues in storage here you’re welcome to take if you’d like. Sheets are too heavy; you’ll have to apply the tape more often.” He says it like it's some kind of apology.

“Thank you,” Carlos says quietly, not entirely sincere. He walks out of the recording booth.

That night, Carlos is on the break room couch. His head tipped back staring at the ceiling as he has been for a few hours. He barely hears Cecil’s voice on the radio. He tuned it out after Cecil relayed an edited and much more extravagant version of their conversation to the entire town and lamented the fact that no dinner plans were discussed.

_Another world, he said… If I were to visit another world..._

* * *

The conversation replays in Carlos’ head for days. He thinks of the mysterious rift in the center of the _Ojo de Dios_. He thinks of the massively ornate door that once appeared in the alley behind his lab only to disappear before he could open it. He thinks of the black journal he keeps of other such sightings.

* * *

The trailer park is a blissful place to be during sunset. The purple hues of the dying sun glitter off of the aluminum trailers offsetting the brilliant red earth. The earth shifts beneath Carlos feet as he readjusts himself. He feels the strain from sitting too long in his back and along his butt and thighs. He sets his notes down and turns as the rhythmic crunches of gravel grow louder behind him then stop.

It's Cecil, desert wind blowing his tie over his shoulder and his long black hair in his eyes. He must have walked here from the studio across the field; far enough away to be an inconvenience, in dress shoes, after a long days work. Carlos turns away to hide the uncomfortable feeling of guilt that settles heavy in his chest.

“Sorry to sneak up on you, it's just, I haven’t seen you in awhile and we had that bad case of throat spiders earlier this week...I was just wondering how you were doing. ”

Ouch yeah that guilt is sharp. He had been busy, throwing himself into the pursuit of other worlds, following the trails of other universes like a dusty adventurer in a leather cap. He hasn’t really had time for the town, or Cecil. Every other day over the radio and quite publicly, Cecil would bereave the fact that Carlos seemed to be avoiding him. The broadcast from yesterday in particular had struck a chord with Carlos… 

{ _Listeners, some of you have inquired as to when Carlos and I will be having our second date. Unfortunately we haven’t scheduled anything. I mean, he’s been so busy with science and all…uh…hm. Maybe, maybe the first date didn't go as well as I thought. Conchular directional tornados aren’t everyone's cup of tea after all! Or maybe it was something I said… Oh! Yes of course. Ahem. And that concludes the traffic report._ }

Carlos sighs and grasps for something to say, some excuse to give but Cecil beats him to it.

“Sorry. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… I know you’re busy, I’ll just… go now…”

“No wait, Cecil! Actually, you…have perfect timing. I could use your help.” He really couldn't. He is highly self sufficient and this is a one man job. But the hope on Cecil's face just now helped eased the guilt a bit. Carlos just needs to find something for him to do while Carlos finishes his calculations. “Could you hold this for me and…tell me when the little yellow light blinks.” 

That light in particular just lets him know if the machine is running out of battery, but Cecil doesn’t need to know that.

Cecil sits down in the red dirt next to Carlos with little regard for his slacks. “I would be happy to help! I’ve never done a science experiment before, this is so exciting!”

“Never? Don’t they teach science in Night Vale schools?”

Cecil turns a quick humoring smile to him before studiously watching the light. “No, no, no. We would learn science things in school yes, like how time travel really isn’t a thing and how to find your way out of the Shrublands using the ear of a jackalope. But we couldn’t _do_ science experiments, we were students not scientist! We did do thought experiments though. Our teacher would tell us stories of experiments, would tell us to imagine a room with black tables and overhead vents. He would tell us to reach for this thing or that thing and add it to the solution over medium heat. In our minds of course. He wasn’t a very good storyteller though, so sometimes I had to help him out and change the story to something enjoyable. I would disrupt the class, telling them to imagine instead that the solution was sentient and had a Polish accent. I was in detention a lot back then.”

“ _You_ were?”

“Mmm-Hmm, but it was ok. I kind of looked forward to it actually. He was ah…well. Let me just say our science teacher was absolutely gorgeous. We were all pretty hot for teacher.”

Carlos bursts into a loud hearty laughter and Cecil’s chagrined look lasts for only a second before he’s laughing too. He catches a light blush on Cecil’s cheeks as the headlights of a car sweep past them. Carlos clears his throat of chuckles and looks away. 

“I had this professor at my university back in Chicago, well he wasn't my professor, he was in the office next to my professor. He was so good looking. I thought about taking a geography course just to be in class. But he was fired before I got the chance.”

“Why was he fired?”

Carlos looks back at Cecil, smirking “He slept with a student.”

“No way!”

They’re both laughing loudly again, bodies shifting on the soil with their strength of their laughs, elbows lightly brushing. Carlos can’t help but enjoy it; this easy banter. He catches his breath, closes his eyes, and tilts his head back, smile broad and unrestrained.

Cecil has calmed down next to him. Almost hesitantly he asks, “So, what was he like?”

“Oh well he was good looking enough, but it was his voice that really did it for me. He had this _deep_ voice-”

Cecil interrupts him, struggling to morph his voice into something hysterically deep, “ **Oh Carlos, your light is blinking.** ”

And they burst into giggles again. And it’s so refreshingly easy to laugh like this. He looks at Cecil. It must be the weird lighting here or something but Cecil looks different now, not physically, but-. Carlos can’t quite put his finger on it. They'd somehow scooted closer during their hysterics. Elbow to elbow, their hips almost touching, and Cecil’s lips…

Carlos clears his throat, looking away from those lips to the machine in Cecil’s lap, “Um I’ll just. Let me see?”

Cecil hands him the machine. Feeling just a little lost, he takes his time making a show of checking the machine, and writing a few scribbles in his journal. He puts his pen and notebook up, wraps his hands around his knees and looks up at the stars. He feels lost, yes. His time here has been ruled by unpredictability and instability and like a ship without an anchor he can do nothing but stay afloat and hope that the shore he will wash up on is a friendly one, if he finds a shore at all.

He glances back at Cecil. He has also leaned back to watch the lights in the sky, a handsome smile on his face, perfectly comfortable in their companionable silence. Perhaps nothing about Cecil has changed. Perhaps Carlos is just seeing him in a new light, or seeing what he has been all along.

“There’s this quote I’ve been thinking of recently,” he says, “All human plans are subject to ruthless revision by nature, or fate, or whatever one prefers to call the powers behind the universe. Arthur Clarke said that. He wrote one of my favorite books, _2001: A Space Odyssey_. Have you ever read it?”

Cecil hesitates at first, eager to impress, “Me? Oh well no, I haven’t. But I read a lot actually! I really enjoy reading! I mean, only municipally approve books are allowed in Night Vale so I’ve never…” he trails off to look around quickly before turning back to Carlos and whispering, “Well, there was this one time. I was at Old Woman Josie’s house. She had just left for a moment and I didn’t mean to snoop but there was an illegal book right there on her coffee table! I knew it wasn’t municipally approved because along with not having an official seal on the cover, there was a picture of a gorgeous bare chested man with long flowing blonde hair, I mean I had to take a look right?”

Carlos laughs with a half cocked grin, “Well aren't you the town rebel, showing up your teacher, reading forbidden romance novels. I'm impressed Cecil.”

Cecils giggling but bites his lip, a linger unease of the repercussions of his crime Carlos guesses, “Shhhh! Carlos you can’t tell a soul! You must take my secrets to the grave!” 

“Haha cross my heart and hope to die. Eww, no I take that back. That was horribly corny.” Cecil laughs good naturedly. “Terrible jokes aside,” Carlos continues, “Why are you concerned about following the rules? Aren't you pretty above it all?”

Cecil gently hums, “Everyone has rules Carlos. Everyone.”

The sobering moment brings with it the awareness of the frigid night that has descended gradually upon them. Carlos looks up into the stars now feeling the loneliness of this night a little less keenly. He gives that some thought and leans a bit further into Cecil as they stare up at the stars, touching from shoulder to elbow now. Cecil doesn't pull his elbow away, neither does Carlos. He feels a warm glow from Cecil and thinks back to all the frigid imaginings of Death he once held. 

“You're warm.”

“You’re surprised.”

“I would've thought the Grim Reaper would be cold to the bone.”

“Ugh, Carlos please! Don't call me that! You’re the one that's cold!” He says and playfully nudges Carlos’ bicep. 

“Me?”

“Come on let's get you home, how long have you been out here anyway?” Cecil asks as he stands up.

Carlos really isn't sure, anything he was doing before Cecil showed up seems suddenly unimportant. He spares a thought for his notebook before He shrugs, and offers Cecil a ride to his car. 

“Oh but I'm all dusty,” Cecil says. Carlos looks down at him and is treated to a completely unintentional or absolutely intentional show of Cecil brushing red dust from the seat of his pants. His very tight pants.

“Um… no-no I insist…” Carlos says distractedly. 

They don't talk on the short drive to the radio station parking lot. Well, Carlos doesn't. Cecil starts and stops several times, opening his mouth and closing it quickly, fists clenching tight around the passenger’s seat.

Cecil gets out of the car slowly. He pauses for a moment to thank Carlos for the ride. Cecil stands there, like he’s waiting for something, hoping for something. Finally finding his courage and taking a deep Cecil says, “Um it was good. Tonight was good.”

Carlos smiles fondly, “Yeah. See you around, Cecil.”

“…Yeah, see you.” Cecil turns to quickly for Carlos to catch the downward tilt of his lips. He walks to his car feet dragging just a bit but Carlos is too busy watching the sway of his hips, remembering the shine of his lips as he bit into them, and those stunningly terrifying eyes. 

Once inside his apartment, he closes the front door and bangs his head against it. _I am so fucked._

* * *

He dreams. 

It's rare and wonderful. Flashes of images dance in his head. Vibrant hues that coalesce into pleasing figures and shapes that wrap him in a sweet and softly hummed lullaby.

He wakes with a blissful groan, feeling the morning sun kiss his bare skin and he snuggles further into his cocoon of blankets. A different sort of groan is pulled past his lips as he turns to lay on his belly, putting wonderful pressure on a rare morning erection.

‘Well, hello there.’ He murmurs

It's been years since he’s had morning wood. Longer still that he’s had someone in his bed long enough to enjoy it with but never mind that. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Carlos plans to enjoy this opportunity to its fullest extent. No, he wants to take his time with this, like he hasn't since he was younger.

He shamelessly ruts against the mattress. Rolling his hips to chase the friction. Letting loose a long, pleased groan. He turns over, bringing one knee up and spreading it wide so he can lay a hand over the bulge in his boxers. He slightly drags his fingertips over the cloth, shivering in anticipation.

Carlos runs his other hand up and down his chest, smoothing long fingers over his sensitive nipples. He gives one a pinch and feels his cock give an appreciative twitch. He pulls himself free from his boxers, running a thumb over the head of his cock and smearing the beads of precome he finds there. He releases a shaky sigh, unable to stand how much he needs this right now.

He takes his cock in hand and starts gliding his foreskin over his shaft in slow lazy pulls. His imagination pulls him back to the images from his dream, now presented in a more erotic light. An alluring voice and plump round ass fill his thoughts. Lips that seek to please every corner of his body. His fist works quicker, his breath comes harsher and his back arches off the mattress as he loses himself in his passion. He comes with a surprised gasp, shaking with the intensity of his orgasm. Thick strings of semen coat his chest and belly. He’s pretty sure some got on his chin too. 

He grunts and leaves it for the moment as he slumps back down onto the sheets. He takes a minute to catch his breath and clear his mind of the imagined lover in his dreams and the voice that ripped his orgasm from him…

 _Fuck._

He was thinking of Cecil.

_Fuuuck. Was it because of last night, it has to be because of last night. Yeah, that has to be it. It’s only because Cecil was the last person I spoke to last night. It’s not like I’m sexually attracted to- to the avatar of Death, that would just be wrong, wrong on so many levels. Couldn't that be considered a form of necrophilia? It’s probably necrophilia. Fuck I don't know._

He stands in the shower, resting his overworked head against the tile until the water runs cold and orange.

* * *

When he makes it to work, late, his coworkers don't bat an eye, one of them often late himself. They are quietly chatting and absorbed on their own projects. He makes himself a cup of coffee in the break room, then starts setting up his work for the day. The old radio is on. 

It's Cecil's show. They always keep it on Cecil's show and Carlos might even admit he listens to it in the car. And at home where boxes still crowd his living room. And every time he's on, really. He sits at his station and gets to work, trying not to focus on the memories of this morning that Cecil's voice invokes. He adjusts himself in his seat.

{ _….We now an update on the body snatcher that has been terrorizing Night Vale since Sunday afternoon. The Sheriff’s secret police have just released the following statement. “We’ve pretty much figured out how he’s swapping bodies. He gets close then he bursts into a mist and invades his victims through their pores, enters their blood stream, and dissolves the person from the inside out. Really gross stuff. So as a preventative measure, we are ordering all citizens of Night Vale to keep at least 90% of their bodies covered when they are in the same room as another person. We apologize for the inconvenience.” They said sympathetically to me over the phone. Well that’s…bad timing to say the least but I'm sure they have our best interests at heart, even if that seems going a little overboard…_ }

There's a “Damnit!” shouted from behind Carlos. He swivels away from his notes to see Billy glaring at the radio and Mandy with a smug look on her face. 

“This isn't over Mandy!”

“Of course it’s over. You can start paying off your debt with lunch.”

“No, no, no. It's not over! Carlos can still bang Cecil by the end of the week.”

“E-excuse me?” Carlos chokes out. But neither of his coworkers seem to hear them over their arguing.

“And how would they do that?” Mandy asks, “They can't even be naked in the same room. I win. You lose. Get over it and pay up.”

“Love will find a way Mandy and that $300 will find its way into my pocket!”

“EXCUSE ME!” Carlos bellows. He stands and levels a disbelieving glare at his coworkers. “Are you betting on me?”

“Not just you bro,” Billy says with an infuriating grin, “You and Cecil.” He grabs a nearby beaker, thrusts his hips into it and grunts, “Unf unf unf-.” Carlos scowls and is not blushing at all. Not at all. Mandy gives Billy a sideways death glare and punches him in the shoulder, “-Which can't happen if you two can't get naked together. I. win.” She says with a final forceful shove. Carlos decides he is so done with this conversation and turns back to his notes.

“Nonsense my sweet misguided Mandy, I haven't lost. There are ways around this.”

“Like what pray tell.”

“Does a glory hole count?”

Carlos sputters and now there is coffee spray all over his notes. He coughs and fights to catch his breath. 

“Crude. And no that's technically in the same room.” Mandy says deadpan, without skipping a beat.

“Uh, not crude, extremely hot.” Billy says with a waggle of his eyebrows. He sighs, hums thoughtfully, “Oh! Phone sex, they could totally do phone sex! Come on it totally counts! Or they could do a little live cam action. Oh! They could use a double ended dildo through the glory hole. That would still be legal. Would that still legal?” He asks.

Mandy sighs, over this conversation too and turns back to her own work, “I don’t know Billy. Why don't you go down to city hall and ask them?”

Carlos stands up and announces very loudly, “I'm going to take an early lunch!” He flees from the room, inconspicuously holding his notebooks over his groin. As he’s opening the door he hears Billy’s voice, “While you’re asking, check to see if latex catsuits count!”

“Not asking!” Carlos yells from down the hall.

Billy and Mandy can bicker all they want, he has way more important things to do than listen to…and think about… _ahem_. He takes a quick trip to the bathroom to splash some water on his face. His reflections seem infinitely amused. “Oh shut up.” He mutters.

But it doesn't matter. Let Billy and Mandy laugh, today is a momentous occasion and he won’t let anything bring him down. Let his reflections laugh. He won't be on this side of the mirror for much longer anyway.

Cross referencing his lab notes, his journal, and the findings from last night has given him exactly what he needs. A breakthrough! A formula! A plan! After months of work, careful observational note taking and theory creating, Carlos believes he has found a workable formula that could predict the appearance of a world gate. He just needs to run a few more tests. Well, he should do a few more tests. He should certainly not run off to the nearest gate, which should appear in an hour in the back of the bowling alley…

He’s on his way to the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex when of course, OF COURSE, he runs into Cecil.

Literally runs into him as Carlos is rushing past a deli and Cecil is walking out of it. Notebooks, scientific instruments, and a take-out bag go flying, apologizes are stuttered, and recognition sets a fine blush on both of their cheeks. The silence is awkward and their fidgeting even more so. 

With his notes in hand, Carlos tries to bluster through this so he can get on his way, “So yeah, I um, got some good data yesterday, was able to finish my project.” He says.

“Oh? That’s great!” Cecil says with that token lip bite that haunted Carlos’ dreams. 

“Yeah. There should be a world gate here pretty soon. So I'm going to go do that…” 

The rate at which the blood drains from Cecil’s face must have been dizzying. “Carlos you…you’re leaving?!”

“Well I mean it's just an experiment but-“ 

“-you can't!” Cecil says with fierce finality.

Carlos feels the muscles in his neck tense, his jaw clench, and his pull in an angry scowl, “What do you mean, I can’t?” He growls. 

Cecil looks like he’s going to be sick.

With a patient sigh and less than patient frown, Carlos explains, “Cecil this is something I have to do for myself. I'm stuck here in this Carlos that’s not me but is me, and I have to make the most of it. In this place of incredible happenings I've been given a golden opportunity to explore like no other scientist ever has. But instead I'm stuck here, idling waiting for something to change and being powerless to make it happen, being both dead and alive, do you have any idea what that's like?”

Cecil makes a distressed whine and places himself in between Carlos and the direction he was about to leave in. He holds up his hands. They’re shaking. “But you see, you have a great deal of power here. You really do! It’s like that Singer’s cat thing you were telling me about, right? Not knowing what fate awaits the cat in the box until you open it. That will be you Carlos! Both of those outcomes exist, you are the one that forces the universe choose. It’s the same way with other worlds Carlos! When you go through that gate, an outcome will be created for you based on the laws of that world. Laws you have no knowledge of! You have no idea what could be waiting for you there! If you really-”

“-I'm a scientist Cecil. I’ll figure it out.” Carlos interrupts him. “This is right. I can feel it.”

“You really can’t.” Cecil whispers, shaking his head in denial.

Carlos moves around him, further down the street, passed a few stores, and pauses for a second to look back, surprised Cecil did not try to stop him or follow. 

He hears a strange terrified sort of whimper as Cecil stares at him in horror. His limbs shakes, and his body sways as if trying to follow, as if being held back, before his body jerks harshly towards the radio station, steps jittery and unstable. Head bent low.

Carlos heads into the bowling alley.

* * *

Carlos marches into the bowling alley with his equipment and notebooks. There's a party going on towards the end of the room. He hears half hearted drunken hollering before sneaking through the maintenance door, toward and into the inner workings of the bowling machinery. One of the men called out to him, either to come join them or to scold him for trespassing. It doesn’t matter. He won't be in this world for much longer anyway, who cares if he pisses off a few people on the way out… 

He consults his notes, wedges himself between two of the machines, and starts setting up around the area when he hears Cecil's voice over the bowling alleys radio, somehow narrating what he’s doing as he does it. Carlos snorts, still angry, and continues his work. The party goers hear too and stumble over, looking for entertainment.

It’s dark between the machines, and any light Carlos shines upon the area seems to be swallowed by the darkness. A glance at his wristwatch tells him the gate should be here now and only for a few minutes. He frets over his notes, worried that he’s made a mistake when he catches an odd scent. Wine, he thinks. It’s coming from just a little further back, a sharp scent that overrides the smell of oil, grime, cigarette smoke, and cheap beer that permeates the bowling alley. 

Carlos reaches a hand out blindly and feels around the edges of a hole that appeared with the smell. He wipes sweat from his brow as moisture clings to his skin. It’s humid. _Was it humid before?_

He puts pressure around the edges of the hole and it crumbles around his fingers as the sickly sweet smell overcomes him. He reaches for his notebook only to find that his limbs are frozen. His heart races and his nerves tingle up and down his limbs as he frantically tries to make his legs move. 

From deeper inside the black sweet mists that pour through the hole, emerges a group of shadows vaguely humanoid in form; Carlos can’t tell. The mist swarms them, envelops them like silk. As they come closer, his nose burns with the smell of sweet wine. The nearest figure extends a hand, or what Carlos assumes is a hand. It twitches and Carlos finds himself taking one small step after another until his forehead is mere inches from the creature’s hand.

The hand lowers, and so does Carlos onto his hands and knees. His head snaps up staring in shock, as the hand presses against his forehead and gently pushes down until Carlos’ cheek rests on the sticky ground. A warrior materializes in the mists. A weapon of some sort, jagged and lethal, is aimed at Carlos’ sweaty temple, the sharp point drawing blood that flows down over his nose.

Carlos’ world has narrowed down to that point of contact but he dimly registers a noise coming from the bowling alley. Crying. Cecil’s crying. Carlos doesn’t know why Cecil’s crying. But he wants to. He doesn’t want anything else in this world besides leaving here to find out why Cecil is crying. If he could concentrate, maybe he would know. If he could hear over the loud Russian yelling into his ear, maybe he could make out what Cecil was saying. 

And he’s in a cold white room, with a metal chair digging into his back, but there’s a Native American man here too. 

“Oh, hello.” Carlos says.

The man is silent. There is no sign of captors. No hole in the machinery behind the bowling alley. No Night Vale. No Cecil. The silence stretches on. 

“Who are you?” Carlos tries again.

“A Fate.” The man says, “A multiversal voyager, like you.”

“Wow. I think that I would be learning a lot right now if I could speak Russian.”

This earns him a wry look from the man’s weathered face, “You do, or at least one of you does.”

“I’ve seen you before. Around Night Vale.” Carlos says. He’s feeling oddly nostalgic, oddly reflective. He supposes the room is to blame. He goes on, thinking out loud, “I’ve see a lot of things. Angels, Dragons, Monsters, and Death. You know, I never imagined Hell would be like this.”

“This is no Hell, Traveler. You have been brought by Death to the peripheral of worlds. This is a crossroad, where all worlds meet. Nowhere but here are beings like us able to fully be what we truly are. It is the last of such places. This is no Hell, Traveler. It is The Final Rest.” 

The room is growing dark, Carlos’ head is getting fuzzy. He doesn’t have much time now, “You’re the only one that seems to have any answers around here. So tell me, what happens if I go to other worlds?”

The Apache Tracker ignores him, darkness consumes him, and he loses consciousness.

In the darkness of his mind, a warning is rumbled into his ears, “Take heed Traveler, Death mourns your loss. Take heed, a Dreamer God comes.”

 

…And Carlos is awake, staring into the dead eyes of the man he was just speaking to. They lie on their backs in the center of the maintenance area; he must have been pulled out of the hole at some point. There's people all around him now and all he can think about is Cecil. 

With a grunt he sits up, scaring the man tending to his injuries. He brushes the man away and with one last look at the one who saved his life he turns towards the exit. His head throbs, his ribs stab with every breath. He limps to his car and starts driving mindlessly with no thought as to where he wants to go for this. He turns down the block and there is the Arby’s, uncommonly beautiful underneath the lights in the sky. He parks there, sits in his car for a long quiet moment, staring at his phone, before calling Cecil.

Cecil appears almost instantaneously, car door thrown open, hurried steps bringing him to stand in front of where Carlos sits on the trunk of his car.

“Carlos! Oh Carlos! Look at you!” He reaches out a hand to examine the wound on Carlos’ forehead but Carlos grabs his wrist and gently pulls him forward and up to sit on the trunk alongside him. Cecil lets himself be lead but his expression is anything but complacent. There’s a certain sadness there.

“What happens if I die here Cecil?”

Cecil’s body stiffens and his mouth hangs open, paralyzed like he has been struck.

“I heard you crying over the radio,” Carlos explains. “You don't know, do you?

Carlos hears a small sniffle. He looks over to see Cecil’s head bent down, eyes tearing up a bit and looking miserable for it. “Some beings come and go through the worlds and their fate is known to me, but what happens here…I can only watch.” he says with a shake of his head and a crack in his voice.

His tears are falling freely now. Carlos turns towards him, cups Cecil's cheek in his palm, rubbing his tears away with his thumb leaving smudges of blood in their wake. Cecil leans into the touch, sniffling, his left hand on Carlos’ knee, holding on like it’s a lifeboat.

“I'm sorry, Cecil” Carlos murmurs softly and he leans down to envelope Cecil in a hug. Cecil stills at first, hands coming to hover around Carlos’ waist but not touching, fearful of scaring the intimacy away. With a shaky sigh, he finally gives in and returns the embrace, mindful of Carlos’ wounds. Cecil's sobs gently subside. With a final squeeze, Carlos lets Cecil go and smiles as Cecil wipes the remaining tears from his face. He reaches up to brush an errant strand of purple hair from Cecil’s brow. “He called this place The Final Rest.” Carlos says thoughtfully.

He hesitates. Whether the question catches Cecil off guard or he is merely trying to steady his voice, Carlos isn’t sure. “I- he spoke to you? The Apache Tracker spoke to you? I um…haven't heard that name in a looong time. I mean he _is_ pretty old, as far as fates go anyway.” He says as he looks up at the sky, Carlos looks up too. “This is our home Carlos. The Multiverse is a lonely place after all, for people like us.”

Carlos hums, unexpectedly pleased with the simple answer, “I guess even Death needs a place to hang his hat at the end of the day.” 

Cecil smiles and Carlos is relieved to see it. He places a hand on Cecil’s lower back, rubbing small circles there. “What's a dreamer God?” He feels the muscles underneath his fingers bunch and tighten. Cecil is too high strung to feign ignorance but he tries anyway, “I'm... not sure. Why, what did he say?” Carlos expected as much. With a sigh he repeats the odd conversation he had with the Fate.

“Oh Carlos, don’t fret over what that old thing said. He’s at least as old as the stars. Who knows anything about what he says anymore. I mean I'm glad he saved you, eternal grateful in fact. But that guy always has rubbed me the wrong way.” Cecil explains, waving a hand animatedly. Carlos chuckles; too tired, too happy to be alive to press the question further and pulls Cecil closer.

“Like Steve Carlsberg rubs you the wrong way.”

“Oh my god Carlos, how could you even mention Steve Carlsberg to me right now! You know what he did before my lunch break today? He barged into my studio, talking about all kinds of useless information _no one_ cares about. And he had on the most _ridiculous_ pair of-“ 

“-You know, I really want to kiss you right now.”

“-shoes. I-what?” Cecil squeaks and turns a lovely shade of red. His mouth hangs open and Carlos gazes meaningfully at his lips, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t move when Cecil starts to wring his hands and he doesn’t move as he hides his laugh in his smile.

“Well?” Cecil finally huffs.

Carlos’ laugh escapes in a deeply pleased rumble, and Cecil turns away in mock anger, a beautiful pout on his lips.

Carlos reaches up to tuck Cecil’s bangs behind his ear. He bends over, his nose brushing the outer edge of Cecil’s ear and rumbles, “Cecil, if we are all of our alternate selves at once, then this....” He slowly runs his index finger from Cecil’s ear, down the ridge of his jaw, to take a hold of his chin and turn his face towards Carlos. Cecil gasps. 

"Then this, Cecil, is our first kiss, our last kiss, and every kiss in between.”

Carlos’ lips cut off the small sound Cecil makes as they kiss underneath the lights in the sky.


	3. Intermission

Death is in love with Carlos. But Death won’t tell him so, not anymore.

Carlos sees it instead, in the shine of Cecil’s eyes as he brushes his thumb over a smooth check, gently rubbing their noses together.

Carlos feels it in a sweet gust of breath against his neck as Carlos kisses each of Cecil’s eyelids so, so tenderly. He feels it in the curve of a hidden smile when Carlos tells him that his hair smells like lemongrass.

But Cecil won't say the words. 

Not anymore.

Carlos feels their absence at every missed opportunity. Every heavy silence that follows when Cecil takes a quick breath, those words on his lips as Carlos knows they must be, before they are bitten off, swallowed, hidden once again.

And he shouldn't expect...

He shouldn’t.

But sometimes when Carlos is spending a quiet night curled on the couch with Cecil tucked neatly under his arm, Carlos can _nearly_ convince himself that the words aren’t so important after all.

_Nearly._

* * *

With the front door now slammed into place between Carlos and the yelling zealots parading down the street, he can finally, _finally_ , hear the crisp ringing of silence. 

_And it's too much._

The walls are too bare and all he hears is _silence_. His bottom lip trembles a bit because he _wants this_ , wants to enjoy this rare piece of nothing. 

_But it’s too much._

With shaking fingers, he props open a window and the garbled chants of the figures in the street glide into the room and his jaw clenches shut. 

_His phone buzzes; a new message._

Carlos shoves his hands deep into his coat pocket, he doesn't want to see them shake. Step by aching step he makes his way to the bathroom, bones heavy and eyes unseeing. He leaves trails of red dust in his wake. 

_His phone buzzes._

He drops his shoes to the bathroom floor carelessly. His lab coat sheds more red to swirl in the air before it stains the fluorescent white tiles around him. 

_His phone buzzes._

Naked in front of the covered mirror, Carlos braces his hands on the counter, head hung low between his shoulders, skin pulled tight over tense muscles, with bones rattling rattling rattling underneath. 

_His phone buzzes._

Carlos pushes off the counter and turns to start the shower. A static drumming fills his ears. The water runs in rivulets and curtains through the air before crashing to the floor and Carlos stares and stares, transfixed on this one moment and nothing else. He stares unseeing, listens unhearing, and when his phone buzzes again only then does he step into the shower. The water turned to ice long ago. The numbing will be poetic, he thinks. 

But the chill bites. It _burns_ . It sets sparks and spurs digging, alighting along his nerves. Goosebumps rise and hair stands on end and his body surges to life in a rush of adrenaline and leaves him hissing and spitting as he yanks the water tap off. 

Fiercely he rubs his skin raw and dry with a towel, his anxious energy unbound and unleashed. He swallows, throat clicking, and makes it to his bedroom before pulling on a pair of boxers and stumbling into bed. 

He stares at the scalding whiteness of his ceiling and thinks he can still hear the spine-quaking ticking of his watch from where it was shoved deep in the recesses of his underwear drawer. 

It shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter anymore. Or at least he had hoped it wouldn't matter, after so long. 

But there it is. Here _he_ is. 

As he has been for a year now, as of today. 

He doesn't realize someone has entered the apartment until he feels cotton scratch at his shoulders, too-hot fingers wrap around him and press into the lines of his back, and the sent of lemongrass becomes overwhelming. 

The smell rushes into his lungs tempting them to take in their fill of air, it soars through his veins and pulses thickly over his muscles, coaxing them to relax and with a great trembling sigh, he does. He lets his head loll against Cecil’s shoulder just for a minute until he’s being pushed and pulled along the apartment, one leg out of bed and then the other, into sweatpants and into socks, across the bedroom, a jacket around his shoulders, and suddenly he’s standing at the front door as Cecil slides Carlos’ phone across his palm, picked up from where it laid smashed against the bathroom tile, pieced back together by the same careful hands that are now trying to piece _him_ together too. 

He’s being driven through the chilly desert night to Cecil’s apartment, his hand still curled around Cecil’s, his phone clasped between their palms. He slumps into Cecil’s couch, wrapped up in Cecil’s long limbs. He understands now why Cecil brought him here: to a plush couch and a stained coffee table, to the warm glow of shaded lamps that soften loud paintings on overcrowded walls, to the scent of dark roasted coffee with a hint of something Night Vale-ishly inedible, to the sound of music Carlos could only identify as ‘gypsy tango’ floating out from the bedroom door, to a clock that doesn't tick but trills to the tune of a different birdsong every hour. 

Finally, cell by cell, the world comes back to him again. 

Cecil’s staring at him and Carlos feels his cheeks burn in shame and moisture prickle under his eyelids. He pulls Cecil closer and hides in the crook of his neck. “Welcome back,” Cecil murmurs good-naturedly and tucks a curl of hair behind Carlos’ ear, “You ok?” 

His mouth is too dry and he feels the muscles in his jaw protest when he tries to speak, so Carlos does nothing but tighten his grip and nod. He isn't sure if Cecil knows what today it is. He’s equally unsure if he could tell him. 

“Good,” Cecil continues. “Because I got you a present.” 

Well that answers that 

“I was going to give it to you this morning,” Cecil explains as he pulls away and slinks off towards the kitchen, “But then that happened.” He gives a vague wave in the direction of the gathered mass of people several blocks away. 

Carlos can still feel distant parts of himself yearning for disassociation. He watches Cecil’s shadow instead. He can see it just around the corner from the kitchen, it shrinks and grows as Cecil moves about, paces and stalls and buzzes with Cecil’s nerves. 

When he was first invited into Cecil’s apartment it seemed angry and almost violent in its chaotic way. Bright bursting color patterns and mismatched furniture, piles of cups and blankets and place mats. Noise from every direction: the persistent music always playing in Cecil’s bedroom, the distressed creaks of the sagging wooden floors, the gurgle of the coffee maker. 

When he looks now, he sees an underlying order buried so far beneath it all he couldn't begin to describe its systems. But there it is. Every item accounted for. Everything in its place. Every piece orchestrated in a way Cecil deems best by some dictated logic long lost to anyone else. Carlos forgets just who he’s dealing with sometimes. 

He’s lost in his own thoughts until he feels the couch shift with Cecil’s weight. Cecil’s not looking at Carlos but is instead fixated on a small trophy in his lap. 

It's a tiny thing, plastic most likely if the glimpses of it he gets through the cage of Cecil’s long fingers are anything to go by. It brings to mind a shelf overburdened with similar trophies in the living room of his childhood home. Knowing what Carlos does of Night Vale’s education system, he is surprised to see one here. 

Carlos snorts against the small smile curling his lips, “Last I checked it’s not _Dia de Los Muertos_. Is it normal for people like me to celebrate their Deathday while they’re still alive?” 

______“There's no one like you, Carlos. So, it could be normal if you wanted it to be.” Cecil says as he rubs his thumb over the embossed letters on the trophy plaque._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos welcomes the warmth in his cheeks, welcomes the sudden affection he feels for this man course through him and unfurl all his knots. Curiosity takes hold of him and he reaches for the trophy but Cecil holds it away with a smirk._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos reaches again and Cecil moves it farther forcing Carlos to stretch along Cecil’s body. Carlos gives him a giggling kiss to distract him and makes a third attempt before Cecil pushes him away, laughing. “Wait Carlos! It's not ready!”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Looks fine to me, now let me see it!” He says as he hoists a leg over Cecil’s lap to pin him in place and starts running his fingers mercilessly along Cecil’s ribs. Cecil bursts into stuttering peels of laughter, his body arching and twitching away beneath Carlos’s strong thighs._ _ _ _ _ _

______Cecil tries to speak but Carlos is enjoying himself far too much to let up. “I-“ is about all he manages to get out, volume rising with the overstimulation, “CARLOS!”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“I- HA! IT’S A WORLD GATE!” He yells._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos flinches away nearly falling off of Cecil’s lap. The smile twists off his face and his chest constricts tightly. “What did you just say?” He asks breathlessly._ _ _ _ _ _

______Looking suddenly nervous, Cecil clears his throat, “I wanted to- I thought tonight we might visit another world. Together, if you wanted. Since your first visit was…”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“You want me to go back to...”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“No! No, of course not. It's a different world. A peaceful world, a little wet, but peaceful.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“…”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Ah, don’t worry about that though! I’ve got some umbrellas, a tarp, I put a whole pack together actually!” He says while vigorously pointing towards a duffel bag perched precariously on top of a pile of laundry. “Okay so maybe it sounds like a bad idea now, but I tried to find a world I thought you might like, and there's no people to poke spears at you! I just thought you might want to…I thought we might…with the restrictions in Night Vale...” Cecil mumbles now, blushing, “I thought it might be neat.” He finishes lamely._ _ _ _ _ _

______“I- Yes, I think that could be…neat.” Carlos says even as he is fighting the ridiculous urge to run. He stands, locking his knees in place and tries for bravado and instead landing somewhere closer to robotic when he says “That would be super neat, in fact, scientifically neat. Thank you, Cecil.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“So how does it work?” He continues with a dubious look towards the little plastic trophy._ _ _ _ _ _

______Cecil grins and jumps off the couch. “Well…” He says with kiddish delight. He maneuvers himself into what little free space there is available in the living room. He spares a glance at the clock behind him, muttering “It should be fine now,” before grasping the lip of the trophy with both hands and pulling. The top of the trophy stretches wide as if made of elastic, spanning the length of Cecil’s chest. Cecil crouches low, balancing on one leg as he positions his right foot on the stretched lip and pushes down, creating an opening large enough for a man of Carlos’ size to fit through. The whole display is cartoonishly exaggerated and with a tremendously stupid grin on his face, Cecil proudly announces, “Like this!”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos frowns and, going by a previously proven hypothesis about how these portal operate, he holds his arm out to pass through the portal Cecil has made in the trophy. He’s not surprised when his hand disappears before it hits the bottom of the trophy cup, but even so, he turns nervous eyes to stare into Cecil’s sparkling ones._ _ _ _ _ _

______“See you on the other side!” Cecil says with an encouraging nod toward the gate._ _ _ _ _ _

______He steps in._ _ _ _ _ _

______And he’s in a cold white room, .50 desert eagle pointed at his head, onlookers gawking, and the machine whirling, whirling, whirling. It clicks and Carlos jolts back in his cold metal chair and he can't move and he’s screaming, “CECIL! CECIL! CECIL!”_ _ _ _ _ _

______It’s too much. It’s too much. It’s much too much until it isn’t and he feels a pull at the bottom of his gut and he is thrown unforgivingly face first into warm dark dirt._ _ _ _ _ _

______He gasps for air and sputters, wiping the grime from his cheeks. He is aware that someone is there with him, talking to him, touching him, but he isn’t paying any attention to that because he is looking around and…._ _ _ _ _ _

______He sees fields and fields of large poppy like flowers, heavy with dew. Their reds are royal and iridescent, gleaming in the low metallic light. He breathes in a bouquet of humid wet air and ozone that sticks to his lungs and weighs him down. A fluttering light catches his eye and looking around he finds odd lightening bugs swirling from petal to petal in fantastical dances all across the fields._ _ _ _ _ _

______Cecil's there too, crouching beside him and rubbing soothing circles on his back. Carlos looks up at Cecil questioningly, but his words die on his tongue at what he sees behind Cecil’s face._ _ _ _ _ _

______An oceanic sky undulates far above his head. For a minute of vertigo he grasps at Cecil, convinced that he is being held upside down dangling over the ocean. But he doesn't fall and the oceanic ceiling does not crash down to greet him; it waves. From deep within its depths Carlos can see the shadows of schools of fish and what appear to be whales in this great ocean suspended in the atmosphere._ _ _ _ _ _

______He hears Cecil’s urgent voice, “Breath Carlos, breath!” and so he does, finally. He inhales and feels his lungs shake with the effort and he’s realizing that his whole body is vibrating and Cecil is looking very worried._ _ _ _ _ _

______“……I'm fine.” He manages at last. “I'm fine.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Above him, a pod of whales breaches the ocean’s surface, blowholes erupting in a spray of water vapor that descends to the flowers below. Some dew drops fall into Cecil’s hair and he wipes them away irritably. Carlos just laughs. He laughs and laughs this deeply guttural and satisfying laugh that echoes in the cage of his chest and into his heart and Cecil’s smile is blinding._ _ _ _ _ _

______“I knew you’d like this place.” Cecil says softly, his voice dripping with affection._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Cecil, It's amazing! Thank you!” he says grabbing the man and pulling him into a kiss, their smiles stretching their lips thin. Cecil leans back and brushes some of the remaining dirt out of Carlos’ hair. “Just a second, let me fix this place up.” He says and starts pulling a thick tarp out of his duffle bag and laying it across the mud._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos sprawls back on the tarp and opens his arms wide, looking at Cecil imploringly. Cecil wastes no time making himself comfortable in the crook of Carlos’s arm, tucked close along his body and head resting on Carlos’ broad chest._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos strokes his fingers through Cecil’s curly blonde hair and asks, “What is this place?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Cecil hums in thought and Carlos can feel it vibrating through his chest. “Sometimes, when you’re walking down the street, you might see a building. The door is nailed shut, the paint is faded and peeling, the tiles on the roof are in disrepair and barely clinging on, some windows have a thick layer of dust on them and the rest were broken long ago. Or maybe the windows are boarded up. You see this building and you think, ‘What did this place used to be? What did people come here for? Why did they leave?’ This world is like that building. Dark, discarded, and dead._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Dead?” Carlos says incredulously with a gesture towards the sky-ocean. “But Cecil this place is alive! Don’t you see it? Those creatures up there and down here with us, creating energy, giving life, living out the rest of their days. There’s so much here Cecil.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Cecil merely hums again, digging his fingers into Carlos’ pocket and fishing out a piece of paper that wasn’t there before they arrived in this world. Come to think of it, he distinctly remembers Cecil shoving him into sweatpants, not jeans. Cecil turns it away so Carlos can’t see what’s on the other side and with a patient smile he says, “That’s what I get for having a scientist for a lover.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Oh we’re lovers are we?...Cecil what is that?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“You’re right,” Cecil vaults a leg over Carlos and raises up so that he is straddling him now, paper tucked into his back pocket, “We’re not lovers, yet.” He wiggles his hips to emphasize the point._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos lifts a thick eyebrow but lets a smirk pull at his lips. He cups Cecil’s face gently between his palms and lowers him so that their lips are barely brushing. He pauses there, relishing this moment until Cecil lets a sigh escape to caress Carlos’ lips and that breaks the spell. Their lips meet together, chapped lips creating friction that thrills the both of them to their cores. They part and Carlos sighs a happy little sigh and Cecil goes in for more, insatiable in this as he is in everything else. Cecil’s kisses are powerful, demanding things. His tongue swipes along Carlos’ bottom lip, his lips suck lightly there, and Carlos can’t help the groan that has his hands flying to Cecil’s waist and his hips canting up._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos moves one hand to the back of Cecil’s neck, trying to get some handle over this so he doesn’t feel so out of control. He massages Cecil’s neck roughly as his other hand moves to grab a handful of Cecil’s ass. Cecil moans his approval and pivots his hips so that Carlos has better access and brushes their half hard cocks together. Carlos holds Cecil’s neck tighter as he quickly wrenches the piece of paper out of Cecil’s back pocket an tries to take a look as Cecil squirms on top of him, “No! Carlos!”_ _ _ _ _ _

______It’s a picture. Or a sort of Polaroid to be exact. Faded, and worn. In it, Carlos can just make out two people: a fragile looking light haired woman with glassy eyes held protectively in the arms of a man. A Carlos. This Carlos has long hair that’s pulled back into a matted bun. His chin is small and his eyebrows are large, but this is Carlos. He knows this with terrifying clarity. In the woman’s arms is a baby._ _ _ _ _ _

______In the distance there is a disturbance, the wounded cry of a creature Carlos cannot begin to imagine. A flock of sea-birds flee the nearby hill, bobbing and weaving through the thick mist, their scaly plumage glittering in the silver light, until the group of them break the water’s edge and ascend into the depths of the ocean above. The fireflies are agitated now, growing bold in their anger they float closer to the pair of intruders. They flit in and out Carlos’ vision, a dance similar to one he recalls from within his lab on his first day in Night Vale._ _ _ _ _ _

______He knows the answer, but he asks the question anyway. “What is this?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Cecil, who had been watching his face all this time, leans back so that he’s straddling Carlos once again, a resigned sigh falling from his red glistening lips. “We talked about this Carlos. You can’t just plop down into a new world and expect it to make room for you beside your alternate self. That’s not how the multiverse works. Instead it is your consciousness that is transported, your perspective. You are the Carlos of this world, creating energy, giving life, living out the rest of your days.” He says nodding towards the picture._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos turns his gaze away from the nervous pull of Cecil’s brows and back to the family in the picture. He looks at them and wonders about their lives and their fates here on this warm and wet world. Quietly, reverently, he tucks the photo safely in Cecil’s duffle bag and grabs Cecil’s hand from where it was anxiously worrying the hem of his shirt. He twins their fingers together and brings his other arm up to hook around Cecil’s neck, pulling him in for a gentle kiss._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Thank you Cecil, for showing me this.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Cecil nods softly, still looking like he is expecting Carlos it get up and walk away any moment. Carlos decides it’s time he did something about that. He surges forward and flips their positions, not without some awkwardness, pinning Cecil’s back to the mat. They kiss again with intent this time, slow, but just as eager. Ready to indulge one another in ways they couldn’t back home._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos grinds his hips down onto Cecil’s. They’re both getting hard again. Their tongues dance together and Carlos hungrily consumes all of the delicious noises Cecil is making. He breaks away to lavish his attentions on Cecil’s neck. He drags his lips down and down and gently nips at Cecil’s clavicle to feel Cecil gasp and arch his body up against Carlos who delights in pinning him down again._ _ _ _ _ _

______He continues his downward journey, pulling Cecil’s shirt up, enjoying the huffs of laughter that escape Cecil every time he finds a sensitive spot, like here just under Cecil’s armpit on the side of his ribs. “Ha! Carlos…” Cecil moans as Carlos holds a nipple between his lips. He doesn’t apply suction, not yet. He swirls his tongue over the bud, feeling it grow harder against his lips before grasping it between his teeth. He waits until Cecil’s moans become breathy and wavering before he finally sucks hard while at the same moment he brings his hand up to tickle at the side of Cecil’s ribs. “HA-AHH!” Cecil cries as he bucks wildly, unable to control himself. Carlos releases him and laughs heartily as Cecil shudders hard underneath him._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Carlos…” comes a pitiful complaint._ _ _ _ _ _

______“Don’t worry sweetheart,” Carlos breathes, peppering kisses along Cecil’s midriff, “I’m going to take my time with you.” Cecil moans again and lets his head fall back against the tarp, bringing an arm to lay over his eyes._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos smirks, feeling mischievous, he starts tugging on Cecil’s belt, “Hey, you’re all human under here right?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Cecil laughs and then shudders as Carlos pulls off his belt. “Of course, what were you expecting?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Oh I dunno, tentacles, diphallia- lift your hips for me, there you go,” he says as he pulls Cecil’s pants down towards his knees, “-internal genitalia maybe. Or perhaps a tail.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Without skipping a beat, “Oh, I can do that for you,” Cecil deadpans._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos barks out a surprised laugh, his hands frozen from where they were making progress on Cecil’s briefs. Cecil hears his breathy tones as Carlos stutters “U-um...”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Cecil smiles widely, “Too much for you to handle?” he taunts._ _ _ _ _ _

______“So what-“ Carlos can feel the blush burning his cheeks, “-Can you really change…?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Yes.” Cecil takes no effort to disguise how obnoxiously pleased with himself he is while grabbing hold of one of Carlos’ hands, bringing it to his lips where a newly transformed two-pronged tongue slithers out to wrap around his fingers._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos insides turn to liquid fire at the elaborate fantasies that come colliding through his brain and with a harsh bite of his lip and a small nervous giggle he replies, “Let’s just keep it…um…let’s just keep things they way they are for now?”_ _ _ _ _ _

Cecil hums in agreement, enjoying the fierce light burning in Carlos’ eyes as he tucks one long matted lock of hair behind Carlos’ ear. Meanwhile, Carlos pulls Cecil’s briefs the rest of the way down and his free and _very human_ cock bounces against his belly. Before Cecil can get too comfortable, Carlos is grabbing the back of Cecil’s knees, lifting his hips up and settling Cecil’s legs around Carlos’ shoulders. 

Cecil giggles in surprise, “Eager aren't we?” and Carlos bites his thigh to shut him up. He grabs Cecil’s cock in hand and runs his hot tongue along the underside, enveloping the head around his lips and giving one good hard suck before letting the member pop free of his mouth as he moves on to lick a thick stripe over Cecil’s balls. Cecil lets out a long and high pitched moan, his hand reaching uselessly for his pants. “C-Carlos, there’s unh- there’s lube in my front pocket…” 

______Carlos hums and rubs a rough finger lightly over Cecil’s opening just to see him squirm, “You really did plan this all out didn’t you?”_ _ _ _ _ _

______“Well with the rules against nudity, we couldn’t really…” Cecil reddens. Carlos wonders how far he can get that blush to spread. He pushes the finger in, just a bit, and watches Cecil gasp and pull away slightly, his brow furrowing. Carlos sobers, silently cursing himself after realizing just how out of practice he is. With a determined breath, he ducks his head and licks apologetically at Cecil’s entrance, causing Cecil to jerk again but for an entirely different reason, “Car-Ah!”_ _ _ _ _ _

______He continues licking into Cecil, and brings the pad of his finger up again to rub small circles around the inner rim, dipping the tip of his finger inside intermittently. “Oh-Carloscarloscarlos,” Cecil murmurs like a mantra, “You don’t need to- I’m not a-“ Carlos pushes in up to the first knuckle and hushes him gently, “Shh, I told you I was going to take my time with you. I want to do this right,” he says as he sighs a kiss onto Cecil’s quaking opening._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos uncaps the lube and applies a generous amount to Cecil and himself. He thoroughly stretches Cecil out, giving him time to adjust before adding a new finger, murmuring assurances into the soft skin of his thighs. Cecil does eventually get impatient and takes charge, as Carlos figured he would, and using his legs as leverage Cecil pins Carlos down and positions himself on top once again._ _ _ _ _ _

______He leans down and makes quick work of Carlos’ clothing. Carlos reaches for Cecil’s straining cock but is batted away quickly. Once Carlos’ cock is free, thick and full and leaking precome against his stomach, Cecil just stares and bites his lip. In a rare moment of self consciousness, Carlos fears he has somehow turned Cecil off, but in the next moment Cecil is taking Carlos in one lube filled hand and gliding the head over his slicked entrance, “One day soon Carlos, I want feel your cum as it slides down my throat.” Carlos’ jaw drops and he makes the most undignified noise of his life and Cecil lowers himself onto his cock._ _ _ _ _ _

______Cecil, ever the entertainer, puts on a show for Carlos while he rides him, back arched, the silver light illuminating the sheen of sweat along his limbs so beautifully, hands carding through his dark locks before he lifts them above his head, hips undulating as they sway to the tune of their mingle heartbeats and harsh breaths, and all Carlos can do is hold on for dear life as he lets out a “Fuck!” teeth catching hard on the fricative._ _ _ _ _ _

______Carlos comes embarrassingly quickly, but so does Cecil and it’s all so perfectly perfect that Carlos isn’t sure it’s real for a moment._ _ _ _ _ _

______But then there’s Cecil, whispering “I love you.” So, so quietly as if afraid of Carlos hearing it, but not being able to stop the words._ _ _ _ _ _

______And then there’s Carlos, long hair falling out of his bun and into his face, wanting to say the words back, but they get caught in his throat._ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A friendly warning, things are going to get DARK in the next chapter, but not before a little more smut of course.


End file.
